Been on the phone for an hour with bureaucratic city office worker nightmares who are clueless and unhelpful AND who are making plans for lunch with co workers while on the phone with me.

Some crackhead pulled a bunch of plants out of the planter boxes at the cafe - left the root balls intact but snapped the main stem right off so there's just a bunch of stubs.

My morning cook's nephew was shot and killed in a drive by yesterday. I just found him downstairs crying. And he won't go home, says it'll only make him feel worse. I feel so bad for him.

yucky, icky, sucky day.

11:45 am and already 90 degrees out.

This evening I have a 4-hour dress rehearsal in an unairconditioned church.

Not an annoyance, but my father is in the hospital for some unknown ailment (probably a tick bite but not Lymes). He is feeling better and on a stream of antibiotics, but...

Sorry to hear that, N. Even if it isn't Lyme, some of the other tick-borne illnesses can be nearly as insidious. Hope he recovers soon.

Annoyed that Michael Jackson is on the cover of all of the daily newspapers today.

A succession of minor illnesses felling first one child and then the other is annoying enough, but now it's my turn and I can't go to Merce Cunningham tonight and lunch at the Ledbury tomorrow is looking very doubtful.

clb

They're doing work right outside my window and running some kind of machine that makes a horrible screaching noise every 20 seconds or so.

And to think it's finally nice enough to open a window.

On subject of sick children, I am sure mother's ferocious hand with the AC is giving my daughter a dry hacking cough. What's the best way to reintroduce a little humidity to the environment while keeping it cool enough to sleep?

We had one of those when she was a baby, and it never seemed to do much. We have window units.

You could try switching the unit to bring in air from outside rather than recirculate. Cost more, though.

Having to cool my heels in the radiology department at NYU medical center for over two hours. The upshot of which was being told I have tendinitis in my left knee. Well, yes, I have had it off and on since I was in high school. If anyone has any questions about todays New York Times, I had time to read every single word so fire away.

Lifting my own quote, from the Pet Peeves thread.

Oh, that's handy - thunderstorm at going home time. And I suspect a fellow MFer is caught in it on the way to dinner too.

Pouring rain in June, and we couldn't even find the baby goat petting.

On the other hand, pouring rain is better than the usual reason I would post in this thread at this time of year: almost annually, some pinhead from the high school sets fire to the giant field next to our house. One year it burned twenty acres, coming perilously close to our land.

I'll take the rain.

Phish e-mails--got 3 in the last week (eBay & Citibank spoofers). Fortunately I knew better than to click on the links.

phish...brought 4 16 yr old girls to a Phish concert 5 years ago, at t the Garden State Arts Center. Designated a pick up spot near the Vietnam Vet memorial there..dropped them off, tickets, cash, they were set. I parked, read books and magazines until the sun set...then, reclined my SUV seat, threw a harry Potter blanket over me, and closed my eyes...BRUTALLY awakened by a state trooper , local PD and privatre security. Jumped a mile. had to show 10 ID's, they made me get out of the car...finally, they calmed down, I explained that I was waiting for kids, and they explained that PHISh fans OD on a regular basis, it was a major drug band...and that they had three OD's int he parking lot already...things have changed a lot since I convinced my parents to bring me to the Garden State Arts Center to see Meatloaf...maybe a joint shared by the four of us, and the sexual innuendo of paradise by the dashboard light..but not a lot of OD's, I think.

realized on my way home last night that the Muscadet I had put in the freezer for 10 minutes on Wednesday to cool it down quickly, was still there. It wasn't too bad- it was frozen solid, the cork had popped out and there was frozen wine on the floor of the fridge to the front, but it didn't get everywhere and was pretty easy to clean up. If only I'd frozen it in something I could lick- mmm, wine pops.

Swimming last night, I realized I was about to lap the guy swimming in front of and to the right of me so as per standard pool etiquette I tapped him on the shoulder. The idiot speeded up and moved in front of me, kicking me in the head in the process. I now have a slight yet unmistakable black eye.

Yikes, Daisy. Hope you are okay.

We are all assholes now. Guy got on an almost empty subway train in front of me yesterday, and stood right in the doorway, blocking half of it. I hit him from behind pretty hard.

If one more young man walks right in front of me, through a door, and just lets the door slam in my face, I'm gonna, I'm gonna...

Sometimes, in the most ladylike voice I can muster, with an oh so sweet smile on my face, I say, dripping with sarcasm: "thanks so very much."

When I hold a door for someone, and they speed through with no acknowledgement, I like to call after them "Please, thank you."

I say, "Thank YOU, Sunshine!"

And here's an example of another common annoyance. Last weekend in the Union Square greenmarket, I am paying for my chard when I am hip-checked, then pushed, by a tiny elderly woman roughly half my size. "Excuse me, excuse me," she said as she pushed past me. "Jesus, lady," I said. She comes back with, "I said excuse me."